The Donald Drag

 

We've been writing extensively about Trump's electoral toxicity for 4 years. I checked and noticed that I started using the tag "toxicity of Donald Trump" in early June, 2016. Now, as election day 2020 approaches, Republican operatives and funders have largely given up on Trump himself and are freaking out over how to save down-ballot Republicans in places that haven't been truly competitive in the recent past.

Over 6 million Americans have already voted-- far more Democrats than Republicans-- and the only changes in the electoral outlook that time is bringing is a further collapse of support for Trump and the party that has shamelessly enabled him. If polls are to be believed, the public thinks it's time for the GOP to step up and take its bitter medicine. This morning, NY Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote about how Trump's alienation of women, suburbanites and seniors is killing Republicans across the Sun Belt. "The inflammatory behavior that has alienated voters beyond his base," they reported, "has long posed the most significant impediment to Mr. Trump’s re-election. But one week after he rampaged through the first presidential debate and then was hospitalized with the coronavirus, only to keep minimizing the disease as it spread through his White House, the president’s conduct is not only undermining his own campaign but threatening his entire party... He is trailing not just in must-win battlegrounds but according to private G.O.P. surveys, he is repelling independents to the point where Mr. Biden has drawn closer in solidly red states, including Montana, Kansas and Missouri, people briefed on the data said. Nowhere has Mr. Trump harmed himself and his party more than across the Sun Belt, where the electoral coalition that secured a generation of Republican dominance is in danger of coming apart."

Fine, but Biden doesn't need-- nor will he likely get-- electoral votes in Montana, Kansas and Missouri. What this is about at this point is if Trump's electoral collapse will, for example, flip the Florida state Senate, flip the Texas state House, elect Democrats like Texas' Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver in Texas districts once considered safely red-- districts carefully drawn to be safely red.

No one imagined that when Ted Yoho announced his retirement-- for whatever shady reasons-- his north central Florida district could flip blue and send a 26 year old super-progressive, Adam Christensen, to Congress, now a distinct possibility as the campaign of Trumpist shill Kat Cammack circles the drain. When voters look-- instead of voting by rote-- Florida's Cammack, Texas incumbents Michael McCaul and Roger Williams and California corrupt conservative Crooked Ken Calvert are all extremely unattractive candidates. And Trump is causing voters in their districts to end the old habits of just voting Republican without thinking.

“There are limits to what people can take with the irresponsibility, the untruthfulness, just the whole persona,” said Jeff Flake, the former Republican senator from Arizona. Mr. Flake is crossing party lines to support Mr. Biden, who made his first visit of the general election here Thursday.

Many of the Sun Belt states seemingly within Mr. Biden’s reach resisted the most stringent public-health policies to battle the coronavirus. As a result, states like Arizona, Georgia and Texas faced a powerful wave of infections for much of the summer, setting back efforts to revive commercial activity.

...Biden is mounting an assertive campaign and facing rising pressure to do more in the historically Republican region. He is buttressed by a fund-raising gusher for Democratic candidates, overwhelming support from people of color and defections from the G.O.P. among college-educated whites in and around cities like Atlanta, Houston and Phoenix [as well as Gainesville and Austin].

“Cities in states like Arizona and Texas are attracting young people, highly-educated people, and people of color-- all groups that the national Republican Party has walked away from the last four years,” said the Oklahoma City mayor, David F. Holt, a Republican. “This losing demographic bet against big cities and their residents is putting Sun Belt states in play.”

...On Thursday, in a conference call with a group of lobbyists, Mr. McConnell vented that the party’s Senate candidates are being financially overwhelmed because of small-dollar contributions to ActBlue, the online liberal fund-raising hub.

Let me break in here and remind readers that the ActBlue thermometer on the right is meant to make it easy for potential contributors to send campaign funds-- whether $10 or $100 or $1,000 to well-vetted progressives like Adam Christensen in Florida. Liam O'Mara in southern California, and Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver in Texas, 4 candidates on the cutting edge of flipping "safe" red seats in the Sun Belt, all in districts that Trump won in 2016 because of suburban voters-- who have now become distinctly unenamoured of him since then. These are shifting districts and if Cammack, Calvert, McCaul and Williams are unattractive candidates-- and are they ever-- Christensen, O'Mara, Siegel and Oliver are as good as democracy can serve up.

Democrats did well in the Sun Belt in 2018, winning Republican seats across the region and coming very close in others that are highly competitive right now. Martin and Burns wrote that "Now Republicans are at risk of that wave cresting again, and even higher... [I]f Mr. Trump loses across the South and West, it would force a much deeper introspection on the right about Trump and Trumpism-- and their electoral future in the fastest-growing and most diverse part of the country."

Polls show the presidential race in Texas is effectively tied, and congressional polling for both parties has found Mr. Biden running up significant leads across the state’s once-red suburbs. A Biden victory there could be transformational, providing Democrats an opportunity to enlarge their House majority, shape redistricting and deliver a devastating psychological blow to Republicans.





“Texas is really Biden’s to lose if he invests now, and that must include his time and presence in the state,” [Beto] O’Rourke said in an interview. “He can not only win our 38 electoral votes but really help down ballot Democrats, lock in our maps for 10 years, deny Trump the chance to declare victory illegally and send Trumpism on the run.” ... Biden is increasing his ad spending in the state and is expected to dispatch his wife, Jill, and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, there in the coming days, according to Democrats familiar with the planning.

Texas’s growth has been explosive: Over 1.5 million new voters have registered since 2016, a third of them in the diverse, transplant-filled counties that include San Antonio, Houston and Austin. The anger toward Mr. Trump has emboldened Democratic candidates to run more audacious campaigns.

In a Dallas-area House district held by a Republican who’s retiring, the Democratic Party is sending mailers telling voters that their nominee will “stand up to President Trump.” Senator John Cornyn, running for re-election, has lamented privately that Mr. Trump is stuck in the low 40s in polling, holding back other Republicans, people familiar with his comments said.

"We're in the middle of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people," Julie Oliver reminded me this morning with an effective message she's using across her district. "Many of our kids' schools are still closed. Women are having to leave their jobs. We've lost millions of jobs. And meanwhile, both Donald Trump and Roger Williams have consistently put themselves and their financial interests before the people in Texas. This presidency has been an unmitigated failure-- and Roger Williams has enabled him, every step of the way."